Don’t let her resume fool you — Niecy Nash-Betts is a total scaredy-cat.
The actress stars in another Ryan Murphy series, Grotesquenessas a small-town detective trying to solve a series of terrifying murders while simultaneously battling her own inner demons. Ahead of the show’s premiere, Nash-Betts, 54, tells PEOPLE that she’s “absolutely not a horror fan,” but that she’s still “just obsessed with this show.”
“I would leave work and go home and have to clean the house,” she admits of the lingering effects of filming such gruesome scenes. “[I’d] open the closet door, make sure the windows are locked, look around. I’m not a fan [of horror]but I’m a Ryan fan.”
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She also relied on her wife, Jessica Betts, to do some of the security checks around the house after particularly long days on set.
“I’m happily married, so whenever I came home to my better half, I just felt safer,” she says. “I felt like, ‘Okay, you go find a boogie man, I’m going to bed.'”
Jessica Betts and Niecy Nash Betts at the premiere of FX’s “Grotesquerie” held at Spring Studios on September 23, 2024 in New York City.
John Nacion/Variety/Getty
Ironically, her wife “loves horror movies,” she says, which ended up working out perfectly because Jessica “got to play a small part in this with me.”
“That was nice. Bring your spouse to work,” she jokes, before calling mixing work and pleasure her “favorite thing.”
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Despite not being a horror fan herself, Nash-Betts “had a blast” filming the FX series. “When I saw some of the crime scenes being updated — you just don’t know how he came up with this.” “I’m obsessed with this series,” she continues. “When we were shooting, we’d have days where the cast and crew on set would just talk about who we think Grotesquerie is. ‘I think it’s this person. I think it’s that person. What about this? What about that?’ ” You can’t help but rely on it because it’s a perfect unit.”
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Niecy Nash as Lois Tryon in ‘Grotesquerie’.
Prashant Gupta/FX
Murphy aside, another draw for Nash-Betts was the complexity of her character, Detective Lois Tryon.
“I’ve never played a character like this. Her family life is a wreck. Problems with her husband, problems with her daughter. She abuses alcohol. She has so many demons of her own to fight, but at the same time, she’s really good at what she does,” she says.
“I thought it would be interesting to give her my instrument and see what would happen. And I loved it.”
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Grotesqueness premieres Wednesday, September 25 at 10:00 PM ET/PT on FX and will air the following day on Hulu.
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Source: HIS Education